Shutters have become popular for buildings such as those in Florida due to the many wind and rainstorms caused by hurricanes, and other dangerous storms having strong winds of over 10 to 20 miles per hour. New building codes now require most new construction in especially coastal parts of states such as Florida to have removable shutters where these structures are often being outfitted with elaborate and wind tested shutters such as those found in roll down shutters, and accordion shutter panels that attach to pre-fixed C channel brackets. Such permanently installed visible channels are aesthetically undesirable since they detract from the appearance of the house and are not easy to hide. Additionally, most older residential homes still require the user to have rush to install storm panels such as plywood, metal and plastic sheeting often with nail fasteners which although being very popular has many problems.
Having to install a plywood panel of either 4×4 up to 4×8 foot usually requires the installer have to rush to pound in many nails around at least the top and bottom of the panels into the framed openings about the windows and/or doors. With an impending storm, the installers have little and precious time to waste. Pounding nails into the paneling every few inches coupled with the difficulty of having to physically lift and handle a large and heavy sheet is quite difficult to do especially if the structure has several or more window and door openings. Furthermore, the pounding of many nails inches apart from one another causes' extensive damage to the underlying window and door frames. Furthermore, the plywood cannot be used more than one season since the nails rip up the perimeter edges of the plywood, impact the strength integrity of the plywood, result in little reuse for the plywood since the ripped up plywood edges are not easily stackable.
Additionally, many window and door openings require having to attach two or more panels to one another to properly cover the opening. Nailing two 4×4 foot panels together, or two 4×6 foot panels together or two 4×8 foot panels together for large openings has additional problems since the adjoining edges need to be flush side edge to side edge to one another. If the adjoining sheet panels such as plywood panels are not tightly, locked together, the excessive wind can easily cause one of the exposed edges between the panels to peel and rip from the window/door opening which can result in damage to the inside of the building due to water and wind intrusion. Overlaying a strip of wood over the seams is often not practical since the seams are often over glass so that nailing a strip of material over the seam between plywood panel edges can result in damaging the underlying glass.
Thus, the need exists for solutions to the above problems with the prior art.